House of Ravens

by Keary Taylor

  “But there are also the Royal Born,” I continue, looking around the room. “Descendants of a King. I will not tell you any more information about that, and this is for your safety. I mean that, do not let your curiosity rise in this matter, for it really, truly will put your life in danger.”

  I grip the podium tightly, restraining myself so that I do not crush the soft wood with my supernaturally strong hands. This was my biggest hesitance in sharing these truths. I did not want to put these people in danger. Cyrus values secrecy.

  But everything will explode if they are not told.

  “I am such a descendant, as was my father, as was my uncle,” I continue. “As a descendent, we are expected to rule certain areas of the world.”

  “Are you telling us you’re our queen?” a man pipes up with blood in his voice.

  “No,” I say, my voice strong and loud. “I am to govern the affairs of the vampires and keep things in their order.”

  “You’re doing a shit job so far,” another pipes up.

  “You will hold your tongue.” Suddenly, Rath pipes up, his voice booming and commanding to a point that it gives even me chills. All eyes shift to him, and there’s something so unsettling and powerful about Rath that no one questions.

  “I am doing my best,” I say, feeling sheepish and judged once more. “These politics are…complicated. But right now, you need to know about the final kind of vampire, as they are the cause of your grievances. The Bitten.”

  The room is once more silent, and they wait with anticipation.

  “They are not Born as vampires, they are turned. Any one of you can be turned. And after you turn, you are a slave to the vampire who created you—Born or other Bitten—for a time. You are compelled to obey them and you cannot fight it. Not for even a second.”

  “You’re saying you could turn any one of us, right here and now, into your unfailingly loyal slave?” a woman who stands in the back of the room with her arms folded across her chest asks.

  “Yes,” I say, and when the uproar begins, I move on as quickly as possible. “But my House and I, we have not created any of these horrific crimes in some time. Yes, in the past, perhaps, under a misguided leader. But she is dead and I swear, I will never permit any of my House members to take an innocent life to create a slave.” My words are spoken harsh, firm.

  “People have been disappearing from our town for months now,” I continue, my voice dropping in volume. “They’ve been your neighbors. Your children. Your wives.” I turn slightly toward Mayor Jackson. And hope he hears my pity. “And I think you already know, they’ve been Bitten and turned. Someone is creating an army.”

  “What are they trying to do?” a man asks fearfully. “Turn the entire town into slaves? For what?”

  I shake my head. “They’re building numbers. But it’s not Silent Bend they are after. It’s me. It’s my House. It’s the Born.”

  “Then leave!” several people shout.

  “Let us live in peace! Safety!”

  “It’s not that simple!” Ian bellows, drawing the attention back to the front of the room.

  “There are too many of them, and this is not something we can ignore at this point,” I say, feeling the fight gather back in my chest, the readiness to battle. “I promise, we will do everything in our power to put them down. To take care of this problem. But we need your help.”

  Ian unzips the first of the bags and takes out a stake. Eighteen inches long, an inch in diameter. “These Bitten are marked in two ways,” he explains as he spins the stake in his hand, his vampire hunter reflexes sharper than ever. “Their eyes are yellow when they’re hungry or enraged, unlike ours.”

  He flashes his red eyes, and every single one of the townspeople present flinches back in their seats.

  “And they’ve all been branded,” he continues. Rath pulls a stack of pictures from his breast pocket and begins passing them out. “On the back of the hand. The symbol of the snake eating it’s own tail. Every one of them. If you see one of them, you need to kill them. With one of these. Straight to the heart.”

  Ian tosses the stake in his hand to a man in the second row. He flinches away, nearly dropping the length of wood.

  Ian grabs the straps of the first bag, lifting it, and holding it wide open, revealing many, many stakes. He walks to the front row of people, and each of them takes a stake, looking terrified.

  “Ouroboros,” I say. “That’s what the symbol is called. It symbolizes re-creation. Every single one of these Bitten have been marked with it.

  “We know you are not warriors,” I continue. “We are not asking you to become hunters. We’d prefer to keep you all out of this. But we do not yet know their numbers. So if you happen to see anything, don’t hesitate, because they have orders, and will do whatever is necessary to accomplish their mission.”

  “This is how we win,” Ian fills in. “By creating allies they never expected. Their intent today was to turn you all against us. Don’t help the enemy.” He passes the bag off to a man who continues to hand out the stakes. Ian walks back up to the front of the room and I move aside, giving him the podium.

  “You all know me. Every single one of you,” he says as he meets the eye of everyone in this room. “You’ve seen me grow up from a little kid, saw me graduate high school. Probably knew of my nightly activities over the years, and how my parents were killed.”

  I see it in their faces: they do know Ian. And they can’t believe what they’re seeing and hearing.

  “But five months ago, Jasmine Voltera ran a sword through my stomach and I was dead,” he says, full of hardness at everything that happened. “Only, I woke up four days later as the very thing I’d been hunting all these years. Learned my mother had an affair and that George Ward was not my biological father. And now I’m this.”

  He lowers his head for a moment. The weight of everything he’s been through in these five months is so apparent. All the struggle. The self-loathing. All the learning and accepting.

  “There are still bad vampires out there, Born and Bitten alike,” he says. “I once thought they all just needed to die. But now, I know. Most of them didn’t ask for this. They were Born this way. And they’re not all bad people.”

  These words from Ian, they’re huge.

  “Alivia is a good leader,” he continues. “She was Born to do this and she’s amazing at it. She will keep us safe, and she’s not going to let those who live under her rule do anything to cause you harm. So, you need to trust her. And you need to help her in whatever way you can.”

  He steps to the side, and I know everything he just said wasn’t easy on him.

  It takes me a moment to gather myself. To move on from the weight of the confessions he just said out loud for so many to hear.

  Ian does love me. He couldn’t have said all that, accepted all this, if he didn’t.

  “I swear,” I breathe, fighting back emotion, “I’m doing everything I can to protect you. So right now, we’re asking you to protect yourselves. If you have guns, keep them loaded and ready. You can take as many of these stakes as you think you need. And keep an eye open for yellow eyes and snake brands.”

  I back away from the podium, feeling depleted and bare.

  I expected them to bombard me with questions. Surely, they have a million of them.

  But they only sit there in silence.

  So Rath does not waste any time in helping me take my exit. He grabs my wrist, wrapping his other arm around my waist, and ushering me toward the door. Down the hall we go, and down the steps, back into the car.

  “I think that went a million times better then I expected,” Ian breathes in relief as we close the doors behind us. “This army will never see this coming.”

  We can only hope so.

  THERE IS AN EXTRA BEDROOM at both the Institute and the Estate. Over the next three days, we make them into arsenals.

  Guns. Grenades. Crossbows. Stakes. Spears. Swords. Anything deadly and destructive, we get them.<
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  I don’t ask questions, but Ian, Danny, Anna, and Smith sure seem to know where to go to get these deadly weapons. They keep leaving the House, only to return hours later with another load full of deadly equipment.

  Each of them seems to greatly be enjoying the task.

  As they walk in and out, I observe Markov disappear and reappear, watching every move Smith makes. So far, he’s done nothing to make me suspicious that he might betray us.

  Late one night, four days after I spoke to the people of Silent Bend, I find myself nearly alone in the House. The crew is out again, stocking up on weapons. Others are on patrol. So I think it’s only Cameron and me at home, and he’s been enjoying lots of his special snacks and is currently being entertained by rerun episodes of Sponge Bob in his room.

  So I find myself downstairs, standing in the ballroom with the key twirling between my fingers.

  With everything going on with preparations for war and tracking people down, I’ve had no time to try to solve the mystery of Henry and his location. But it’s always there, in the back of my mind. The constant question of where are you?

  Crouching down, I insert the key into the hole where the raven’s eye should be and twist. The floor drops, and I slowly begin to lower with it.

  Just as Nial walks through the front door, in full view of where I’m lowering into the floor.

  Our eyes meet, his expression hopeful.

  “Come on,” I say, waving him forward.

  He hops down into the hole as the platform completely lowers. We climb off and I close it back up, locking us down here, hidden.

  “Things have been so busy lately,” I observe. “I know you’ve been dying to get down in here to investigate what Henry was working on.” I did give the laptop I found down here to Lexington, but so far, he hasn’t been able to hack into it.

  Dr. Jarvis immediately heads over to the bookshelf, reading the titles. “Your father certainly has done a good job of shrouding himself in mystery.”

  “Hmm,” I agree absentmindedly. I’m looking for any changes, to see if anything has been moved since the last time I was down here. I don’t know how I’ll react if I find Henry has been into the lab since I discovered it, but I doubt it will be positive.

  But everything is in its same position. Nothing has changed.

  “Your father certainly had an interest in genetic mutations,” Nial observes as he takes a book off of the shelf, leafing through it for a moment, before replacing it. “Most of these are on DNA. Genetic splicing is a popular topic among these books.”

  “Maybe you should take a look in the refrigerators,” I say, pointing in their direction. “Particularly the blood. Different animals.”

  Nial’s eyes widen in excitement and wonder and he heads in that direction. While he takes a look at that, I head to the filing cabinets, opening one drawer at a time.

  The first five I open seem to be research papers from people all around the world. Again, more topics of DNA, genetics, and mutations. Things like reverse engineering the basic make up of a human being. So many things that go completely over my head.

  “These vials, Genesis Serum 12, 18,” Nail says. I look over my shoulder at him. He has the fridge open, but he doesn’t touch anything until he pulls on a pair of latex gloves. “And considering the vials of animal blood, I wonder if perhaps your father was trying to re-create the method in which Cyrus created vampirism.”

  “That makes sense, I suppose,” I say as I turn to the next drawer. This one is full of notes, written in a language I don’t understand. “Bats, tigers, I’ve heard these were used in the creation. And everyone that’s old has referred to Cyrus as the Genesis of vampires.”

  Nial makes an affirmative sound. “But for what purpose? Considering your father’s aversion to connecting with our kind, I highly doubt he was using it to try to create his own, new kind of vampire.”

  “That’s a terrifying thought,” I say. “Different kinds of vampires, with different strengths and abilities. Do you think Henry would be cursed like Cyrus was for messing with nature?”

  “It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” I hear Nial say from behind me. “That we exist, this incredible mixture of science and magic?”

  “I still can’t believe Cyrus managed to do it, all that time ago,” I say, shaking my head. I squat down, opening a drawer closest to the floor. I pull it open and don’t find folders as I expect, but old, yellowed, oversized envelopes.

  I pull the first one out and open the flap.

  Carefully, I slide the contents out, and my heart skips about five beats in my chest when I realize it’s filled with photographs.

  Each of them is an image of the Conrath Estate, taken down the drive a little ways, so that the House is fully in view. The first one is somewhat yellowed, but the image is fairly sharp. A date on the back, written in looping, perfect script reads 1981. The next picture gets somewhat blurrier and the date says 1946. The next one however, is fairly shocking.

  The image is black and white, but it’s easy to tell there are black scorch marks rising up from each of the windows. Where the north and south stone wings of the house now are placed, there is collapsed wood, the house severely damaged.

  And lying before the house, are blackened fields. Rows and rows of black, burned plants.

  The date on the back of the photograph reads November 2, 1875.

  Just days after Elijah was killed. Just days after Henry killed all those people in Silent Bend. Just days after his home was nearly destroyed.

  The last picture is yet again the Conrath Estate, but it’s blurry, difficult to make out details. Rows of perfect cotton plants stretch out all around the house. Its siding is freshly painted white, everything is perfect. Beautifully manicured hedges surround the house.

  I squint, trying to make out all the details, but it’s so old and the camera so rudimentary. I’m pretty sure there’s a figure standing on the front porch. But the only detail I can really make out is dark skin.

  I check the date on the back—1852—and know it’s likely the figure in the image was a slave.

  For a short time, I worked at the bakery in town. The owner Fred told me how once upon a time, the Conrath family owned most of his family. I learned all about slavery and the Civil War growing up, but it’s something that always felt so far removed from me. Something I couldn’t really comprehend.

  But here’s the reality, right here in front of me. It happened right here in this house.

  “Nial, do you have any idea when photography was invented?” I ask without turning around. He’s continued his investigation into the contents of the lab, but I haven’t been paying attention.

  “I’m not sure exactly, but I believe it was in the early 1840s maybe?”

  I glance over my shoulder to see him still going through the contents of the refrigerator.

  Turning back to the envelopes, I carefully slip the pictures of the house back into their envelope. I set it to the side and move on to the next one.

  They’re pictures from around Silent Bend. I recognize the church down by the river and Town Hall, though it’s been added on to now. A shot down Main Street, which looks very different now than it did then—1911 as it reads on the back of the image. There are a few more pictures of the river, and in more than one picture, I see the Hanging Tree, some where it is still alive, but most where it is dead.

  These pictures, they are historical treasures. I marvel over the images of old, historical houses. The one of Mayor Jackson’s house, the oldest in Silent Bend. The ladies in their bonnets and the men with gold chains going from their button holes to pocket watches. The horses and carriages.

  I wonder who took the pictures. It couldn’t have been Henry. Almost all of them were taken during bright daylight, when it would have been impossible for him to go out. Because back then, I am certain there were no sun goggles invented. Though, I suppose I should not doubt my father’s ingenuity.

  But no, I think someone else took the pict
ures. Maybe to bring back to Henry so that he could still have a view of the world around him, even in daylight.

  I place the photos of Silent Bend back in their envelope and move on to the next.

  The face in the first photo stops me motionless. The piercing eyes, the strong brows. The shape of the cheekbones. There’s no mistaking who this is.

  Elijah Conrath.

  He looks a lot like Henry, but perhaps a little more pointed. A sharper chin and nose, his eyes a little more sunken than my father’s. His hair is long, reaching his shoulders. He looks intense in this image.

  He wears a high-collared jacket, a frilly white shirt underneath it. He looks very much the part of a Royal.

  My family. This is my uncle.

  The next image is a group shot. Elijah is seated in the center and a dozen people stand or sit around him. Five women and seven men, each dressed beautifully, regally. None of them smile, no one ever did in pictures back then. But there’s power in each of their expressions. These were House members, and they knew their place.

  I look closer at the individuals. It’s difficult to see too many details, the image is somewhat fuzzy. But finally, I pick out someone I’m sure of the identity of.

  I don’t know Samuel and Christian’s father’s name, but the man standing just to the left behind Elijah surely is him. The same wide mouth. Same blocky nose. He is the man who picked up the pieces of the House when Elijah was killed and Henry refused to get involved.

  I wonder if Christian or Samuel has ever seen an image like this.

  The rest of the photos are individual images of some of the House members, though plenty of them seem to be missing. The Kasks’ father is one of them. But they all look powerful, as if they know their place in life.

  I wonder how House life was different back then. If they all lived with the scrutiny we suffer now, or if the people were ignorant of the true nature of the new residents of their town. At least, for a little while.

  It must have been nice.